SHAPE SHIFTING

Last night for my dinner I slit open a womb of squash, scooped out the papery ivory eggs, sliced a green-white onion body so wet and alive the two halves would not fit tight together. I made a salad of living things, infants of broccoli and radish; dressed it with the blood of olive and grape.

The boundaries are not clear. This morning the dog dug a nest of mice out of long grass, swallowed the babies like little pink pills. They slid easy down her throat: wriggling embryos dissolving in her stomach, becoming dog. I commend them to their god.

And there was a time I read an article about a wildlife biologist summoned to investigate the death of a woman by mountain lion. It happens more often than you’d think. He tracked the beast, found its cache in a litter of leaves. He said, “I hate to tell you, but what was left looked an awful lot like meat.”